Over a number of years, Lego have consistently included 6x10 freight containers in the City cargo sets. They typically have a 2x2 corner plate fitted to the underside corners and usually have a black lifting eye.
The standard Lego system is reasonably effective but there are a few flaws:-
1. The lifting eye needs to be removed to allow container stacking.
2. The lifting eyes are effective but not very realistic. Most containers are picked up on the top corners.
3. When stacking containers, the corner plates get stuck on the container below.
My solution is pretty straight forward. Add four 1x4 Plates with 2 studs (design 92593) to the top of the container. This solves the stacking issue & realism but not the lifting eye problem.
Part 2 of the solution comes in the form of a container lifting spreader beam (above). The lifting eye is still present for the connection with hooks of various machine but the spreader beam connects with the 1x4 plates on top of the containers (below).
I have modeled the spreader beam and basic container using the Studio program and are available on Bricklink Gallery complete with instructions. Spreader beam model
Loading containers onto the 60160-1 truck is pretty straight forward because of the way the set was designed, however loading them onto a flat bed rail car has a similar issue to container stacking. The corner plates stick to the wagon deck.
I discovered, somewhat by accident, that if you take off the yellow barriers from the 60052-1 wagon (above) that the containers sit over the top of the grey jumper plates. The jumper plates stop the container connecting to the deck while giving enough stability to stop the container coming off the wagon with the train at full speed. The yellow jumper plates of my MOC below demonstrates the jumper plate configuration. The Flat Bed Wagon model below is available on Bricklink.
The containers are able to be loaded at each end of the wagon with a 4x8 pallet in between.
The 6x10 container system with the additional 1x4 plates and the spreader beam integrate well with a number of current and legacy official Lego sets along with a number of MOCs that I have created that I will write about at a later date.
The standard Lego system is reasonably effective but there are a few flaws:-
1. The lifting eye needs to be removed to allow container stacking.
2. The lifting eyes are effective but not very realistic. Most containers are picked up on the top corners.
3. When stacking containers, the corner plates get stuck on the container below.
My solution is pretty straight forward. Add four 1x4 Plates with 2 studs (design 92593) to the top of the container. This solves the stacking issue & realism but not the lifting eye problem.
Part 2 of the solution comes in the form of a container lifting spreader beam (above). The lifting eye is still present for the connection with hooks of various machine but the spreader beam connects with the 1x4 plates on top of the containers (below).
I have modeled the spreader beam and basic container using the Studio program and are available on Bricklink Gallery complete with instructions. Spreader beam model
Loading containers onto the 60160-1 truck is pretty straight forward because of the way the set was designed, however loading them onto a flat bed rail car has a similar issue to container stacking. The corner plates stick to the wagon deck.
I discovered, somewhat by accident, that if you take off the yellow barriers from the 60052-1 wagon (above) that the containers sit over the top of the grey jumper plates. The jumper plates stop the container connecting to the deck while giving enough stability to stop the container coming off the wagon with the train at full speed. The yellow jumper plates of my MOC below demonstrates the jumper plate configuration. The Flat Bed Wagon model below is available on Bricklink.
The containers are able to be loaded at each end of the wagon with a 4x8 pallet in between.
The 6x10 container system with the additional 1x4 plates and the spreader beam integrate well with a number of current and legacy official Lego sets along with a number of MOCs that I have created that I will write about at a later date.
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